at the Municipality of Agia Paraskevi
«Interface Tensions: City and Nature – Τάσεις Ενδιάμεσου πεδίου: Πόλη και Φύση»
It was during 19th century that the
prevalence of urban built centrality was first reconsidered in favor of natural
landscape. By that time, not only natural qualities in themselves were clearly
characterized as possessing supreme value, as being “sublime”, but moreover urban
formations began being designed in relation to what we nowadays describe as
“green infrastructure”. Urban public parks and green “emerald necklaces” of
interconnected green urban spaces were proposed, as necessary appendices of the
modern urban identity. They announced, for the first time, a cultural,
“epistemic” proposal” that nowadays seems to possess a worldwide undisputable
significance.
Nowadays
it is clear that one of the most important cultural and political tendencies of
our era, regarding planning, urban design and even building design, concerns the
“fertile city,” the naturally active urban landscape or, in a well-known
terminology, the “landscape urbanism”. Thus the sustainable green urban
formation appears to be a present and future social challenge.
In the case of the Athenian metropolis a densely
populated building area appears to be enclosed by mountainous volumes, on its
eastern and western side, whether its south linear edge coincides with the
seaside zone.
Looking
at the map of the metropolis of Athens we may agree that an important proposal
may look to the interior of its extension, to a network of urban voids and free
urban corridors that could be treated as parts of possible landscape green
network.
However
a second important proposal may refer to the Athenian urban perimeter, to the
surrounding natural reserves, to the sea, or to the mountainous volumes, as the
one in conduct with Agia Paraskevi municipality. Mount Hymettus, the mountain
at the east and south east of the metropolitan area of Athens, seems to be an
important landscape element of reference, for a number of municipalities;
however it has been cut off from the housing areas, in many cases, by intermediate obstacles as peripheral roads
or state estates forbidden for public use.
Thus the aim of our workshop could be described as the
effort for the reintegration of the natural peripheral landscape of the city to
the urban fabric and city life, exemplified in the case study of Agia Paraskevi
municipality. We may propose four directions for this approach
1 – The first may concern the proposal for principal green
passages, being the main “entrances” to the mountainous landscape.
2 – The second may refer to a visitors’ network in the
interior of the mountainous area, using mountain paths and nodal places where a
system of light structures of reference may be installed.
3 – The third may try to introduce lines of green
reference in the interior of the housing area, by redesigning streets and important
urban voids.
4 – Finally the forth may insist on the creation of a
“green crescent,” forming a continuous line of green spaces surrounding the
housing area at the south and the west side of the municipality.
